Just Hit Reset
by Ossian
Summary: post-series, Methos gets a new life, Joe gets an update on it


"Just Hit Reset"  
by Ossian  
  
  
  
He had a system.  
  
He had honed it over time, perfected it with practice. It worked beautifully, efficiently. He slipped into the reassuring pattern effortlessly.  
  
Location, name, occupation. Family history, education history, career history...  
  
Awful lot of history, he noted, still amused by the irony despite the countless number of times he'd had the exact same thought.  
  
Once the skeleton was there he moved on to the details. Most, he knew, wouldn't bother with some of the trivialities. Or at least put the deliberate thought into them that he did. That he had to. The careful compilation of books to admit having read, the precise style of clothing to be preferred, even the slant and slope of handwriting to be practiced.  
  
He built his life on these things.  
  
Every twenty or thirty years.  
  
For centuries.  
  
For millennia.   
  
He found it interesting to see how others muddled through it, to see how many of them were drawn to the same fields over and over again. Universities, museums, antique shops. Living in the past, he thought. Bookstores, he reminded himself wryly and smiled. His own path had its peculiar loops too. He'd gone back to medicine time after time, for one reason or another. But even that was so small a fraction of it all. Every once in a while he'd broken with tradition. Perhaps he still had a streak of adventurer in him. After all, being road manager to a rock and roll band wasn't exactly for the faint of heart.  
  
Now, after a relatively quiet life this time around, he was ready to have a bit of fun again.  
  
It had been a long time since he'd been to Australia. The prospect of six months on a boat had usually been enough to put him off the idea in the past, but there were airplanes these days. Sometimes he wasn't entirely sure if the mode was really any better, but it was certainly faster. If it crashed, you were just as dead as drowning, but at least you didn't have to worry about it for so long.  
  
He enjoyed the fact that he had the time to devote five, ten, fifteen years to a project, to a life simply to satisfy a whim. This whole Aussie excursion had been based on a single passing inane thought that had caught his fancy a few years ago and never quite gone away. In the intervening time he'd quietly accrued the necessary skills to get started, filing them away in a part of his brain that his current life hadn't needed. Occasionally bits of it had shown through, like that fiasco with the database and its wandering CDs, but his interest there could be justified. Or at least semi-explained.  
  
To make the transition between lives, he slowly stripped away everything that had made his old life unique. He made himself a complete blank, a void, a nonentity. He carefully, deliberately reverted to his youngest face, projecting an image of a life barely begun. Slowly he would add layer after layer of his painstakingly acquired details until no parallels could be drawn between the old life and the new.  
  
When he stepped off the plane in sunny Melbourne there was no remnant of the life he had left behind. His eyes were bright with wonder and there was a lightness in his movements that befitted someone of his apparent age. His accent rolled as fluently as his gait. He was more than a little pleased that his new life allowed him to keep the jeans that his old life had made him fond of. The sweaters, of course, couldn't carry over, but in exchange for a warm southern climate he could live with that.  
  
"Welcome back, Mr. Kelley," the passport agent said as she returned his well-worn travel papers.  
  
"Sam," he said, flashing her his best boyish grin. "Name's Sam, not 'Mr. Kelley'."  
  
Seeing only a roguish young man who'd probably had a bit too much to drink on the plane, the woman smiled back at him good-naturedly.  
  
  
* * * * *  
  
  
Several years later, several thousand miles away...  
  
  
  
"Delivery for you, boss," the bartender said as he deposited the large box on his employer's back office desk. "From Australia."  
  
Joe Dawson smiled. There was no return address, but that was okay. He knew who it was from and what it probably contained. Not the exact contents, of course, but the general subject.   
  
Methos.  
  
Much to Joe's amusement, the Old Man insisted on periodically contributing to his own "official" archive. It aggravated the other Watchers to no end when the random packages of journal entries showed up at one field office or another. Sometimes they were handwritten, sometimes typed. Sometimes, if Methos had been in a particularly mischievous mood, they also came with tidy little translations in French, Russian, and Sanskrit. "For your convenience", his impish notes would read. Amy Zoll, current head of the Methos Chronicles, had taken to calling him "the Irksome Meddling Bastard" as a formal appellation. But what could they do? Toss out the autobiographical accounts of the world's oldest living Immortal when he was delivering them on a silver platter? Or in a brown cardboard box?   
  
Not likely.  
  
Joe sliced through the shipping tape and opened the package. On top of the styrofoam popcorn was the inevitable envelope - undoubtedly Methos' explanation of whatever lay beneath it. Joe brushed at the packing beads for a glimpse before opening the letter and was surprised to see the flat black matte of high-tech electronic equipment. What the... He opened the letter.  
  
"G'day from Down Under!" it began. Joe shook his head. Sometimes Methos sounded more like he was fifteen than five thousand. "Just thought that if Duncan MacLeod comes after my head, your lot might like to know why. One would think that after a certain number of years a person would be required by karmic law to develop a sense of humour."  
  
It was an unusually brief note for the Old Man, so Joe decided that Methos expected the "artifact" to speak for itself. It was a bit of a struggle to wrestle the equipment out of the box, but eventually he managed and had to give a low whistle at the impressive set-up. A top of the line 3D gaming system. The technology had advanced a lot over the past few years, making 3D games a booming business, but the equipment was still monstrously expensive. Joe knew, however, that money was no object to some people and the lavish gift had been sent merely to ensure the proper appreciation of the disc he'd found at the bottom of the carton. He had snorted at the neon orange sticky-note on the front of the jewel case.  
  
"Play me."  
  
Once everything was hooked up and seemed to be in working order Joe obligingly slid the disc into the console and put on the wrap-around visor and gloves. He felt a little silly in the get-up, but his misgivings were forgotten as soon as the opening sequence rolled. It was usually a little annoying to see all the credits at the beginning of a program, but Joe quickly caught sight of a familiar name: Samuel Kelley, current alias of the world's most exasperating Immortal. Then the voice began. The new accent fell oddly on his ears, but he knew that he would have recognized it anywhere.   
  
An indeterminate amount of time later, Joe pulled off the visor, still chuckling. A video game. The Old Man had designed a video game. Even if Joe hadn't known Methos had been involved from the beginning, his hand, subtle and otherwise, was evident throughout the program. "Claymore" had been carefully crafted to be completely entertaining on one level... and monumentally galling on another. The Watchers were going to pitch fits. Mac was going to have a stroke. And somewhere in Australia, Methos was unquestionably savoring all their discomfiture.   
  
At its most basic level the game was a typical blood-and-guts-fest. The goal: to beat as many opponents as possible in armed combat. Joe noted, however, that the characters' moves were remarkably true to life. It was almost as if Methos had created a training manual for the modern young Immortal. Richie would have loved it, he thought wistfully. It occurred to him that Richie probably would have gotten a kick out of the twisted thread of humor Methos had woven through it too.  
  
Watcher symbols kept popping up in the strangest places; a hex on a barn, a combatant's medallion, a pin on a cloak... Joe was certain that he recognized a few familiar faces from the European headquarters' hallways in the game too. "Adam Pierson's" old boss, Stern, would no doubt be less than thrilled to find an avatar of himself waging bloody battle on a holographic heath. Vemas put in an appearance as a background casualty in a few scenes. But worst of all was the simulacrum of a rival chieftain... who bore a wicked resemblance to a certain son of the highlands. Methos was right to fear for his head, Joe thought in amusement. Not only was the chieftain portrayed as one of the bad guys, but he was relatively easy to beat. Somehow he didn't think that Mac would find that quite as hilarious as Methos surely did.  
  
There was another envelope at the bottom of the box. Joe had nearly overlooked it, but it fell out later when he started to break down the cardboard for recycling. Again, there was only a short sticky-note attached to a few loose pages that appeared to have been torn from a magazine.  
  
"These ought to go in the files too," the meddlesome Immortal instructed from afar. "See, not only is it critically acclaimed, but it's lucrative too."  
  
The headline of the first article read "Cold Steel, Hot Game". The second sheet was an industry report which included a listing of the twenty best-selling games of the past Christmas season. "Claymore" was helpfully highlighted at number three. The last page was a promotional ad promising several new titles in what was to become an ongoing series for the company.  
  
Joe smiled. Leave it to Methos, he thought. Born in the age of cuneiform, putting his own personal spin on the quantum era. And turning a buck at it too. Amy was just going to love this one.  
  
* * * * *  
  
fin  



End file.
